Halon

Sweet! Thanks a ton.

BTW, has anyone else's tool tips (pops up when you mouse hover over stuff) been busted since I15?

This is irritating because I used it to see how much energy and control I had, and was short of, by hovering over the bars on the lower-right of the place items toolbar.

More importantly, I use it to see all the other enhancements in a particular set, when I hover over just one enhancement.

Ok, I'm enjoying decorating my base (got a lovely spiral staircase) but I see lots of pictures with darker lights, and colored lighting.

My base, which is the small plot, as I'm in my SG all alone, seems to have fairly bright lights everywhere. How do you guys get the much darker mood, to say nothing of other colors?

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*I read somewhere that pets won't heal until there has been enough damage to use the whole heal. By that I mean, if the heal will do 100 points, they won't use it on a target that is only down 95. For this reason, it was suggested not to enhance the heals, since that would make the healing pet wait longer before using it. Is that Correct?

Thanks

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It occurs to me, though I haven't run the numbers, that slotting for heal may actually be counterproductive beyond what you describe, if true.

Consider: Generally speaking, during a battle it's a bad thing if your endurance is topped off (not MM-specific, but in general.) This is because your wasting your endurance recovery, which could be better used popping off some little power or something, if nothing else, and keeping end. just below top.

Of course, most people are fighting to keep it from bottoming out, but that's another story.


Go to back to the healbot, say. Now he's pumped up with +heals. So he heals less often, all other things being equal, because it takes longer to get to his "full heal" line in the sand.

This means more time is spent topped off rather than regenerating end. This means he's actually dumping less end. into (whatever) part of the fight that finds it useful.

So far so good. What I don't know, offhand, is whether the healbots will use up their end. when not healing at all.

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ninja's dont have force fields, ninja's bring pain but also live in japan which gets hit by some huge storms tsunami's and typhoons and monsoons.

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They also are more sneaky assassin than front-line fighter; that's the Samurai. And they don't get wenches. Ya ya, we've heard it all before

Kill the MM, kill the pets. Easy. NPCs may not understand it, but every PC does.

So let the pets live on after the necro dies. It will give the attackers something to think about. Not much, but a little more.


And no, I'm not interested in a bunch of estimates of how difficult it may be for poor old developers to implement. Why would that even enter the picture here?


Issues to work out: MM goes to hospital. MM logs. MM reappears in-zone after coming back to life. Etc.

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I don't have my difficulty on five so I only fight EB's solo. When you can walk away from your computer in the middle of a fight with an elite boss, your character is stupid powerful. When you can aggro multiple bosses and walk away from your computer, your character is stupid powerful.

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How do you get elite bosses in a mission? I run on 5 solid, always, and never see them. Which missions?

Or are you talking about downgraded AVs?

Ok, that's probably what you're talking about. I just wish elite bosses were at the ends of level 5 paper missions. Right after elite bosses were invented, years ago, this was the case.

But I guess too many people wimped out that 5 was now too hard, because it quickly went away. Personally my scrappers loved it, and it was long before CoV.

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Lots of great advice. Thanks!

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You got the most important aspect, right? That you only cast each upgrade once and it affects all pets now. It uses a lot more end, but it's not too bad. Typically, I cast all 3 tiers, then equip, then upgrade. Sometimes upgrade has to wait a few seconds. No big deal.


It does become more of an issue later if you want to refill some dwindling pets during a battle because you still have to cast all that mana, er, cast all that endurance even if you're just recreating 1 minion.

Anyone solo without using their personal 3 shooties or a shootie from a patron set?

So woe be to the guy who figured out a good way to use it such that it proc'd to speed himself up. :-/

Keep in mind the bio page has been busted for at least 3 years and they're in no hurry to fix it. I mean deleting and backspacing and so on screws up. Again, it's an issue of competency I'm thinking.

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Well, as far as I know, it's just a known issue. I don't think the devs have ever confirmed whether they consider it a bug or not - it might be working as expected, as a result of something they had to do to get Mission Architect to work properly.

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This is a bug. I am a developer. I assure you, this is a bug. Even if what you say is true. Especially if what you say is true.

Somebody in their dev group is a little too clever by half jamming in HTML and XML and god knows what as internal storage layers in this thing, and probably there's a command-line parser interface rearing its ugly head, too, somewhere.


"Oh, it won't work with CRs. Ok, just disable CRs and call it a feature." The lazy man's way to programming. People who make decisions like that should be let no where near the interface design of a mass-produced product.

Oh, wait. I'm an mm. I don't need recharge rate increase. Sheesh.

Got a Turtle: Chance for Recharge. The only power I have that will accept it is Caltrops. Does it work in there and, if so, is it a good spot? Or should I sell it?

And I understand how "20% chance of global recharge rate increase" would work on a gun, but what about an AOE thing like caltrops? Each little tick on each person standing there is an independent 20% chance?

Anyone notice the player BIO is also busted the same way now? It doesn't throw this save error, but it does delete all your carriage returns.

This, of course, runs all your paragraphs together in one giant mess. And if you have a little funny table or list in your BIO, heaven help you.

If you already had CRs in your BIO, it will continue to display. Just DO NOT OPEN UP THE ID PAGE or it will re-save and remove your CRs.

My main's lovely humorous story is now a POS, thanks.

One of my favorite characters is "Ghoula the Rotten", a tiny undead necro mastermind. Her bio, created months ago, seemed tailor made for this event.

[u]From Ghoula's bio[u]
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Zombies and other undead have long been cannon fodder for mediocre heroes to beat down, feeling good about themselves in doing so and gaining a little fame in the process. But no more!


For some strange reason, a zombie, tinier than most, came out of some graveyard somewhere, and seemed to have the odd ability to command other undead. Worse, she seemed to be a bubbler like the holiest of heroes!


Like all zombies, this one has no mind whatsoever and follows little more than the most basic of cerebellovoristic behavior, though the strategies it employes are clearly sophisticated. The press have dubbed this anomaly "Ghoula the Rotten", and the name has stuck, though neither they, the heroes, nor their scientists have a clue as to the bigger undead picture.

Or even if there is one.

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So is there a way she can help the zombie uprising? Oh, how I'd love to take a 30-zombie assault battalion and take out the black market truck in Cap Au Diablo.


A zombie can always dream.

Control-f, "Axe", whole word only.

"Not found."

Sigh

Here's the Axe FAQ:

- Take Axe
- KILL

By the way, hair as a pseudo-cape could be attached to the head easily enough from a programming point of view. The real issue is that hair, unlike a cape, doesn't always flow around as if one solid piece of cloth. Especially one of the same width.


They could get around that issue by separating it into several separate bundles, each of which is its own mini-cape. Perhaps have a dynamic change to use a different template template (move as a whole, split into 2, 3, 5 pieces, etc.) depending on how quickly you're moving around.

That should be fairly easy not to mention not particularly CPU-intensive. (My guess is all the cape movements are pre-generated anyway, not calculated dynamically. A few hundred K for layout tables + lookup indices for different movements is cheap nowadays. The original calcs done on a dev. machine could have taken awhile though.)

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..It would be a development nightmare.

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Uh huh. Definately.

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Ours is not to wonder how.

Ours is just to fight and TPtoTheHospital.

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-QR
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1. Robots are ranged pets. The amount of gotos and positioning of your bots you need to do in your average mission is anywhere between none and just enough to not block doors. This is very important because you should be spending your time …

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Sure, if you want to get half of the relative effectiveness out of your bots. If you want to be an effective damage-dealer, however, you need to take an active role in making sure that your bots are in effective positions to use their knockback without hosing your teammates AOE's

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Is this a concern? At best, they're all attacking one thing -- a minion or lieutenant, who cares, AOEs are about mass damage to many of them, not one. At worst, they're on auto and might knock a couple out here and there once in awhile, again no big deal.

Bosses and higher? Again, who cares, since AOEs are about mass damage to many small things, not a handful of high ones, and a knockback on 'em is good if you ask me. People should be using their single-target, etc. stuff against boss+.

Maybe there are a handful of ground-target AOE debuffs, etc. that it would be good not to knock a boss+ out, but in that case the AOE is probably centered on the boss to begin with, and would thus need more than 1 knockback to get him out of range, and one is rare on a boss+. Does not require a goto except in some cases, maybe, and even then you can run-lead them to the start spot almost as well.


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are concentrating on taking targets out in concert, and are not standing too close to melee-heavy mobs

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You target and push your key bound to /petcom_all attack is pretty fast. And for the latter issue (which also happens when a bot goes dumb and runs up to punch something) just push your key bound to /petcom_all passive follow me (whatever it is), push it, wait a few seconds, and do the all attack one. Neither requires a goto per se.

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acid mortars are not too effective when your bots run around a corner to engage a mob, and caltrops are useless when stupid AI makes the bots rush right past them.

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Hence the passive follow me button.


I don't deny a goto wouldn't be useful on a battlefield when you are trying to manage robots while thinking where to place the triage or stand with your huge bubble near the melee, but I wouldn't exaggerate the dire necessity of it.

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Question on this, I have heard many conflicting reports that stealth powers can cause the heavies not to spawn, if this is true is it due to the way some stealth powers lower your threat rating?

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No, the real question is why don't they drop overwhelming numbers instead of going to defeat after defeat?


And with that said, I'll slink out this way...



Also bombs don't do anything even if they explode. What's the point of them then?


And worst of all, they retreat even if they win! I was in Cap Au D early on this weekend when they invaded (again.) We got our butt handed to us. The Rikti won!

Then the Official Notice: "The Rikti have retreated! Yey!!!"


While the bombs and battles are quite exciting, well done!, the bigger context busts the immersion some.


How about a special server with greater interruption, such as if the Rikti take a zone, they hold it until some heroes bust in, establish a beachhead, and clear it back out? While it's taken, the zone is on hold and highly dangerous. Yes, it messes with missions, but if people wanna live on such a server, so be it!

Anyone wanna bet this server would be clogged, rather than avoided because people "don't want their cross-country journey to level with their friend messed up"?

Any takers?

<ul type="square">In all sorts, Contacts with missions you are currently on will always appear at the top.[/list]
This, and having stale contacts fall to a long-term storage list are worth all the other upgrades combined! THANK YOU!


Now if I could just get you to not re-arrange the server list on the server select screen every time I select one, view my chars, then back. At that point the list is completely rearrange, or might as well be, which makes it tough to search for old chars amongst all the servers.


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Okay, so yesterday, I was playing my new VEAT on one of my accounts and teamed with another villain. Sadly, my widow fell in battle, but the other villain continued to fight. I was about to click the "go to hospital" button but thanks to the other player, I leveled up. And since I leveled, I revived (full health and endurance, with inspirations). This was a nice bonus, not what I was expecting.

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Good god, that's sweet. I wonder if they thought of this? In any case, it's so rare they should leave it in as a feature. Leveling is so rare anyway, it's hardly an unfair abuse, which was the argument about giving you full health, end, and a full swath of large inspirations.

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Am I missing something here? I just created a SS/SR brute yesterday, but I see no mention of super reflexes anywhere.

I know it's an end heavy build that will take some time to come into its own, but I can't turn down the built-in speed boost at higher levels.

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Brutes just got SR with I12. You could take a peek in the scrapper forums for a quick reference.

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Hehe, I realized that some time after I created it.

Though I'm a 24+ month vet, I had never created a brute before, so when I did just post-I12, I though /SR had just always been there.

Am I missing something here? I just created a SS/SR brute yesterday, but I see no mention of super reflexes anywhere.

I know it's an end heavy build that will take some time to come into its own, but I can't turn down the built-in speed boost at higher levels.

I thought of so much extra +dam because that would let someone max out +dam without needing the whole set, which is fine, but because of diminishing returns, it kind of removes the use of all 6 in one set, beyond the unique bonuses.

I was looking at the sets. While "Hetacomb" is the extremely rare superior set for melee, I was wondering what happens when someone lucky enough to get all 6 puts them into one power?

Specifically, there are 4 + dam enhancements in that set. They total about +140% in damage. But ED would limit this to something on the order of 100-110%.

So in a sense, what's the point of so much +dam in a set? Yes, I know the "real power" of such sets are the overlapping bonuses, allowing greater values than SO's, to say nothing of set bonuses, but this part just seems odd to me.